Halloween All Year-Long
On a chilly October evening on sidewalks haunted by demons and killers, the air fills with shrieks and curses as girlfriends hug boyfriends, kids clutch parents’ hands and burly men turn into scream queens. All the while, an eerie soundtrack clipped from popular horror movies, TV shows and head-banger rock songs haunts your every step. But this is just a prelude — the real horror lies within the mazes.
Like the classic children’s horror-book series, Goosebumps, if you are brave enough to enter this realm, you may choose your own adventure. Walk through a neon-lit set of rooms wearing a pair of flimsy, paper 3-D glasses while being bombarded with bright lights as costumed demons — all inspired by the film This is the End (starring Seth Rogen and James Franco) — wait to pounce. Down another maze, ghosts from the film Crimson Peak (starring Tom Hiddleston and Jessica Chastain) haunt dark, enclosed hallways, eerie bedrooms and blood-soaked bathrooms, all within the style of a Victorian mansion. Zombies wait behind every corner as guests make their way through Terminus, the setting for much of The Walking Dead’s fifth season. Witch-like demons dressed in black, distorted figures in face masks and the Red-Faced Demon stalk you like a lion does its prey, as you step into haunted houses inspired by the Insidious films. Or take the tram to a poorly-lit area that has been taken over by people in white masks with burnt faces and bloody clothes, holding knives, chainsaws and guns, who look like they walked off the set of The Purge (a movie centering around the idea of all crime being legal one night a year).
Each maze creates a dark, unpredictable vibe. Objects that seem to be inanimate suddenly lurch toward you, throwing visitors head first into the realm of some of the creepiest movies and TV shows out there. This is just a small taste of the spooky thrills waiting for you at Universal Studios’ Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) event.
Halloween Horror Nights is an annual event at Universal Studios Hollywood that runs from late September through the first week of November. Mazes and scare zones are based on scary films or TV shows, usually ones affiliated with Universal. The point of this event is to get in the Halloween spirit. Only bathrooms and the insides of stores are safe havens from the terror onslaught that transforms Universal Studios for more than a month. Thousands of people work on the event in some capacity. According to the Haunted House Association, at least 300,000 guests flock to the event every year, generating between 150 to 200 million dollars on average. Millions go into creating this major production and the man behind all the chills and thrills is Whittier College graduate John Murdy, class of 1989.
Murdy, a tall man whose penchant for wearing all black invites comparisons to Jack Skellington, spends all year long delving into the dark shadows of Halloween, thinking of gags, props, twists, even speaking at events to promote and entice people to buy a Horror Nights ticket. “I oversee everything from making the deals for the movies, TV shows, etc. that we feature through all creative aspects of the event — design, production, construction, even training the actors, etc.,” Murdy says, outlining his role as creative director and producer of Horror Nights. “I also am the spokesperson for the event and do all the media interviews, run our Twitter account, etc. It is a year-long job.”
At this year’s Monsterpalooza — the annual celebration of classic and modern horror, fantasy and science fiction in film, literature, media, art, illustration, make-up and more — held in Burbank this past Spring, Murdy and Art Director Chris Williams hosted a Halloween Horror Nights panel. They discussed five mazes favored by fans over the past ten years (Halloween, Aliens Vs Predator, American Werewolf in London, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Insidious). Murdy excitedly recalls how fans showed up for the panel already dressed for Halloween, cheering and shouting throughout the presentation.
Murdy understands their enthusiasm. His exposure to Halloween and haunting started when he was a young boy growing up in Hacienda Heights. His grandmother, who lived with his family, was always playing tricks on Murdy and his siblings. “My grandmother would hide in the house dressed up like a monster and wait for us to come home from elementary school. Then she would jump out, scare us and chase us down the street,” Murdy recalls, relaxing on a recent afternoon at Universal City Walk’s Coffee Bean. It’s just hours before the fright-night crowd will spill in and Murdy seems constantly on the verge of a smile. “There was another time where she convinced us to pretend like we were murdered when my parents were out to dinner. We covered ourselves with ketchup and lay on the ground until my parents came home. She was pretty crazy. She usually played a witch in my haunted houses. She was supposed to give out the candy but all the kids were afraid of her so we would always end up with more candy.”
An early love of horror films competed with his grandmother as a primary influence on Murdy’s affinity for fright. “I saw Frankenstein at the age of four and instantly became obsessed with the Universal Classic Monster movies of the 20s, 30s and 40s,” he says. “[Also,] The Exorcist seriously freaked me out and still does. Halloween is one of my all-time favorite horror films.”
By the time he was 10, Murdy was putting on his own Halloween productions. “I started doing haunted houses in my parents’ house in 1977. The first one was themed to Star Wars and was more of a show that took place just inside the entryway. After that, they were original haunted houses that went through part of the house, the garage and the backyard. Since I started designing haunted houses, I knew what I wanted to do from an early age.”
During high school and while attending Whittier, Murdy entertained the idea of being an actor. “Movies that inspired me to want to pursue acting were 1980’s Ordinary People, The Elephant Man and Raging Bull,” says Murdy. But he never lost his love for chills. After graduating from Whittier, where Murdy majored in Theater Arts, he got a job as a tour guide at Universal Studios. “I grew up going to the park and loved the connection to movies and Universal’s Horror genre legacy,” says Murdy.
After a while, Murdy moved into Universal Creative, where he helped design rides and attractions for all the theme parks. “I became a production assistant for what was then called ‘planning and development’ in the early 90s, when we were building the lower section of the theme park.”
He left the company for a few years in the mid-90s but returned in 1996 and climbed his way up to Creative Director. Despite the fancy title, Murdy still felt a lot like the 10-year-old who loved turning his home into a haunted house and he convinced Universal to let him return to Universal Hollywood in 2005 in order to resurrect the park’s flagging Halloween-themed events. Called “Fright Nights” when it launched in 1997, the three-night Halloween production went on hiatus between 2001 and 2005. Then, Murdy reentered the picture and the event became the popular, month-long attraction called Halloween Horror Nights. “My vision for Horror Nights was to tie it to real horror movies and to try to do movie-quality mazes,” says Murdy. “That’s what makes Horror Nights in Hollywood the success it is.”
With the event now firmly established, Murdy works to make sure Horror Nights runs smoothly and effectively. Each year presents its own unique challenges such as the time in 2009 when the Halloween (the classic 1978 film) maze was running and Murdy and the Art Director Chris Williams needed to find someone to cast as the young Michael Myers. The problem was, part of the maze involved replicating the opening scene from the original Halloween in which Myers kills his older sister. Guests witnessed this scene looking at the actor’s shadows through a second-story window. Finding a kid up to the task of pretending to stab another stage actor numerous times a day over the course of an entire Horror Nights’ run wasn’t easy. Eventually, Williams recruited his daughter, Samantha.
The same maze presented another challenge in the form of the fake corpse of the aforementioned murdered sister, who would be seen by viewers walking through the maze. In the movie, the corpse was naked and bloody, but Murdy thought that was too much. So, he decided to grab a pair of underwear from his wife and put it on the corpse. His wife found out her undergarments had been called into service while walking through the maze with her husband. Murdy laughs and says she is still not a fan of that memory.
While most people are not thinking about Halloween before October, Murdy looks for Halloween Horror Nights characters all year round and starts on set design in January. He also spends time researching which characters are the “right kind” of scary. “Since we are creating what I call ‘Living Horror Movies’ and trying to do everything to the quality of a movie or TV show, we do an immense amount of visual research,” says Murdy. “On some films, I’ve gone through as many as 30,000 images to find the few hundred pictures I need to use as reference.”
Murdy considers what he does with Halloween Horror Nights “a form of live theatre” and it helps that Hollywood shares his passion. “I usually try to get the creative people behind the film on board first, as it’s easier to make deals with studios when the director, etc. is on board,” notes Murdy. “Lots of filmmakers are already fans of Hollywood Horror Nights, so that makes it much easier. Examples of that would include Eli Roth (Hostel), Greg Nicotero (Director, Producer and Make-Up Designer of The Walking Dead) and James Wan (Insidious). All of them had been to HHN and were fans of the event before I started working with them.”
The event has become successful enough that Murdy often fields calls from producers and studio executives looking to collaborate with Hollywood Horror Nights. “The perfect scenario is if the film or TV show has activation (theatrical, broadcast or home video release) in the window of the event, as it’s easier to make HHN maze promotional for those efforts,” says Murdy. “It’s a really long, complicated process making a deal and going through all the legal steps of a contract. I know a lot about intellectual property rights, film contracts, music licensing etc. [I] never studied that stuff [before]; just had to learn it [on the job].”
After doing this for 10 years now, you might guess Murdy had amassed some cool memorabilia, but he says he only keeps his all-access pass from each year. “I don’t even have a t-shirt,” he says with a laugh. Though he’s quick to add that he does keep a “massive” Classic Universal Horror Collection on DVD in his attic, known as “The Monster Room.”
While some might question Murdy’s decision to leave the role of Creative Director, which oversees Universal’s theme-park development for the more specialized role of producing Halloween Horror Nights, Murdy sees it as keeping in touch with his roots. “I’ve been scaring people since I was 10 years old,” he says. “Horror has always been in my blood and I wanted to bring HHN back to the studio that invented the horror movie,” says Murdy.
His love for Halloween and all things spooky may trickle down to his children.
“Before I did Halloween Horror Nights, I used to throw these elaborate Halloween parties with extensive decorations,” Murdy recalls. “When I began working on the event, those stopped. I didn’t decorate my house for many years but now that I have kids I’ve started again.”
